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Last September, on National Gay Men’s HIV/AIDS Awareness Day, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) declared that men with HIV who have an undetectable viral load—levels of HIV in the blood that are below the threshold of detection—are unable to transmit HIV to their partners. This is often summarized with the phrase Undetectable = Untransmittable or U = U.

The CDC came to this conclusion after evaluating three studies that included thousands of couples engaging in unprotected sexual acts in which one partner was HIV-positive with an undetectable viral load, and the other was HIV-negative and not on pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP).

“No HIV transmissions to an HIV-negative partner were observed when the HIV-positive person was virally suppressed,” the CDC reported.

When levels are this low, the virus is so suppressed that it’s impossible to pass on the virus to a partner sexually. Consequently, HIV treatment is now being used as a form of prevention, commonly referred to a TasP (Treatment as Prevention).

It’s been over 30 years since the inception of the virus, and still, there is so much shaming and stigma surrounding people living with HIV. This in large part due to misinformation and fear of contracting the virus. That’s what led Drs. Jonathon Rendina and Jeffrey Parsons of Hunter College to explore whether gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men actually believe that undetectable = untransmittable.

After the AIDS epidemic there was “a sense that nobody could be trusted that had negative effects on guys with and without HIV,” Dr. Rendina tells Newnownext.

The incidence rate of syphilis in people with HIV increased through 2015, according to new research published in Clinical Infectious Diseases.

Since 2000, the incidence of syphilis has increased among gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men (MSM) in the United States. This represents an ongoing sexual risk, and temporal trends and associated risk factors for newly diagnosed syphilis infections among people with HIV were therefore investigated.

Data from HIV Outpatient Study cohort participants visiting 10 clinics in the United States from 1999 to 2015 were analyzed. A total of 6888 participants with HIV were included, and 641 had one or more new syphilis diagnoses during a median follow period of 5.2 years. Participants were mostly male, age 31 to 50 years (78%), and the majority were MSM (56%).

Since PrEP is one of the newer HIV prevention tools, understanding more about who is using it is important to better tailoring HIV prevention efforts at the national, state, and community levels. PrEP, or pre-exposure prophylaxis, is when people at high risk for HIV take HIV medicine daily to lower their chances of getting infected with HIV. AIDSVu has released the first-ever publicly available data and interactive maps of PrEP use by state from 2012 through 2016, stratified by sex and age.

The new maps from AIDSVu show more than 77,000 people were prescribed PrEP in 2016, with an average 73 percent increase year over year in persons using PrEP across the U.S. from 2012 – when the drug TDF/FTC was approved by the FDA for use as PrEP – to 2016. However, approximately 1.1 million people in the U.S. are at substantial risk for HIV exposure and could benefit from PrEP, according to analysis presented by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) at CROI 2018 earlier this year.

The data presented on AIDSVu reveal that the growth and distribution of PrEP use has been inconsistent across different sexes, age groups, and geographic regions. For example, the Southern U.S. accounted for more than half (52 percent) of all new HIV diagnoses in 2016 but represented only 30 percent of all PrEP users in 2016. That same year, women comprised 19 percent of all new HIV diagnoses but made up only seven percent of all PrEP users.

No one living with HIV/AIDS is immune from the impact of isolation. Numerous studies find that social isolation is a problem among the aging population in general, and especially among the elderly living with HIV. Younger persons are also affected. One study found that younger people living with HIV/AIDS experience more disconnectedness from family and friends than their older peers do. Researchers believe this is due to a combination of factors, including stigma, feeling blamed by others for their illness and younger people not identifying with the need to battle a chronic illness. It should also be noted that persons affected by HIV/AIDS, especially those who went through the 1980s and 1990s, can experience the same symptoms of trauma and isolation as people who are HIV-positive.

I’m a gay psychiatrist. Here’s why I went on Grindr to survey men.

When I open the Grindr app on my smartphone, I see there’s a 26-year-old man with tanned abs just 200 feet away. He’s called “looking4now,” and his profile explains that he wants sex at his place as soon as possible.

Scrolling down, I find 100 similar profiles within a one-mile radius of my apartment in Boston. I can filter them by body type, sexual position (top, bottom, or versatile), and HIV status.

As a gay psychiatrist who studies gender and sexuality, I’m thrilled with the huge strides we’ve made over the past decade to bring gay relationships into the mainstream. The Supreme Court ruled that same-sex marriage is a constitutional right. Today in Boston, two men can walk down the street holding hands without consequence.

But I’m worried by the rise of the underground digital bathhouse. Apps like Grindr, with 3 million daily active users, and others like Scruff and Jack’d, are designed to help gay men solicit sex, often anonymously, online. I am all for sexual liberation, but I can’t stop wondering if these apps also have a negative effect on gay men’s mental health.

Since there’s little published research on the men using Grindr, I decided to conduct an informal survey and ask men why they’re on the app so much and how it’s affecting their relationships and mental health. I created a profile identifying myself as a medical writer looking to talk to men about their experiences. I received about 50 responses (including propositions).

It’s a small sample size, but enough to give us some clues about how Grindr is affecting gay men. And it doesn’t look good.